


i forgot my name again (i think that’s something worth remembering)

by Boom33713



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: 853 words of me dissasociating, Drabble, Gen, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), No Dialogue, but also not really?, just wild being depressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29521626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boom33713/pseuds/Boom33713
Summary: Link forgets, and then he remembers, and then he finds himself somewhere in between, because there are faces drifting in his eyes but he can't quite recognize them.He wishes the goddesses would just let him rest. He's a very tired soul.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	i forgot my name again (i think that’s something worth remembering)

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in the wip folder for literally years now, and it was already as written as it was going to be anyway, and honestly i have no idea why i hadn't posted it earlier, but here, have this little nugget of a fic

Sometimes, Link forgets again. There’s already so little for his mind to latch onto, memory-wise, and every once in a while its like he’s a blank slate again.

(Sometimes, he forgets how to _move_ , how to make one foot go in front of the other until its a run, how to grip a bow or a sword. Those days, he walks in a wobble befitting of a newborn calf. Nothing really gets done on those days.)

Sometimes, he forgets he is Link. All the different things he’s been called crash in on eachother in a cacophony only he can bear witness to ( _Brother, Friend, Mr. Hero, Champion, Little Vai, and on and on and on-_ ). Sometimes, he thinks he’s named things he _knows_ he’s never been called before- at least, not in this life.

Sometimes, he sees things a little differently. There’s blue on his chest in the form of his Champion’s tunic, and then the sword is replaced with a sea creature he’s never seen before and yet knows instinctively, and then its green, and green, and _green_. Sometimes, the fairies are all colored blue, or yellow, or any other color that makes his mind tick in time with the passing seconds. Sometimes, the monsters he fights look all _wrong_ , and its twists at something deep in his chest.

(Sometimes, Link is Link is Link is Link is Link, and he is everything and nothing, there and gone. He is above clouds with feathers covering strong muscles beneath him, he is gripping a small blue instrument in small hands and there are three notes playing in his head again and again, he is fur-covered and the ground looks so much closer on four paws, he is floating at sea on the scraps of a ship and there is a whale with the most peculiar wings on its back above his head, he is a boy who’s seen too much dancing in the grass as he watches a red ponytail sway without song, he holds a polished stick in his hands and the wind curls around him at his own bidding, he is gripping his hat to his head as a great wonder of magic and machine chugs on beneath him and a ghost hovers at his back, he is a wandering soul in a desolate land with only a sword in hand because _it is dangerous to go alone_ , he is two-dimensional in a three-dimensional world as the bracelet on his wrist weighs heavy, he is practically the size of a mouse and he sees less and yet so much more, he is four and one and then it feels like he’s none as his shadow flickers in place, he is a leader of an army and there is a scarf wrapped around his throat in shades of blue, he is, _he is,_ **_he is_** , and then everything snaps back into place again and the Master Sword’s hilt rests in his grip and there’s a field sprawling around him while the Slate bumps against his hip and his fingers tingle.)

(Sometimes, where he would usually remember nothing, he instead remembers everything.)

Sometimes, he’s just a wild boy in a wild land. He cannot find any sense of direction in his fractured thoughts, and so he finds himself wandering aimlessly. He gathers fruits and mushrooms and hunts down deer and boar, and then he wonders _why_ because he already has so many of each thing. He climbs up cliff faces he shouldn’t be able to climb and stands atop peaks high in the sky and he looks down on the world and for a moment he’s filled with something like awe, and something like longing, but there is always a lingering feeling of being so small. Small compared to the Calamity, small compared to the land, _smallsmallsmall_.

Sometimes, there’s a lingering idea of just abandoning Hylia and all the goddesses. Just turning his back on this weight he can always feel tying him down like shackles, and letting only the wild itself be his higher being.

Sometimes, he wishes he _didn’t_ remember his name, because Link is a knight to a kingdom, sworn to following it to somewhere beyond his life’s end. Because Link is a hero, an important piece of a legend as old as Hyrule itself and bearer of a sword that demanded something _so much larger_ than simple respect. Because Link is someone who had, has, and seemingly always will, an entire planet’s fate resting on his oh-so mortal shoulders.

Sometimes, he wishes he could just forget again.

But then, he thinks of friends long dead, and the fragmented and patchwork history he has crafted with the scraps of his own mind. He thinks of the people at the stables scattered across the map, and the various villages that stubbornly continued to thrive despite the dark flooding in on all sides. He thinks of Zelda, of a girl who, with a fate mirroring and intertwining his own, sentenced herself to years of suffering just to give him one more attempt at playing hero.

And then he is nothing but shamed.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] i forgot my name again (i think that’s something worth remembering)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29934972) by [watery_melon_baller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/watery_melon_baller/pseuds/watery_melon_baller)




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